


we’ll make a memory out of it

by lwtmarvels



Category: One Direction
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Mpreg, Pregnant Louis, Smut, a bit of a sad story, but nothing to worry about, harry as benjamin button, harry tops, love for life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 02:19:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17592785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwtmarvels/pseuds/lwtmarvels
Summary: Of all strange things that could have happened at the old good Manchester, a huge and beautiful clock that ran backwards was hang in the wall of the Oxford Road Train Station. Of all extraordinary things that could have happened to someone, Harry was born under unusual circumstances: he was aging in reverse. And of all ordinary and beautiful things that could have happened to him: he fell in love.Prompt based on "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button".





	we’ll make a memory out of it

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! 
> 
> This fanfic is based/inspired on the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. There’s a LOT of the movie in here but also there’s original ideas.
> 
> I hope y’all enjoy it.
> 
> xx Cali

As all things do, it begins in the dark. Eyes blink open. Blue eyes. The first thing they see is a woman near 40, standing looking out a window, watching the wind blowing, rattling a window.

"What are you looking at?"

The woman diverts her look to her father as soon as the sound of his weak and raspy voice reaches her ears. 

"The wind, Dad. They said there's a hurricane on it's way." She sighs, looking through the window again, "You've been asleep, I've been waiting to see you."

They're in a hospital room with layers of white enamel paint trying without success to hide the years... The old man, past 80, withered, still regal with his bald head is propped by pillows, his blue eyes looking out to his daughter from his bed. He is connected to an intravenous for sustenance and a morphine drip.

His name, is Louis Tomlinson. He speaks with a Yorkshire lilt.

"Well, that sucks." His voice becomes slightly light now and the shadow of a smirk dances in his lips.

The woman tries to hide her giggles behind her hand, shaking her head to the man. Her eyes softening a bit. "You never changes, do you?"

Louis nods but doesn't say a thing.

Suddenly he has other things in his mind.

"It all runs together... Like a fingerpainting... I feel like I'm on a boat, drifting..." He murmurs slowly.

"There's anything I can do for you, Dad? To make it easier?" The woman's voice is now worried again just as her eyes. 

"Oh Anna, there's nothing to do. It is what it is. I'm finding it harder to keep my eyes open but you are a wonderful view so I must appreciate it while I can."

And agitated, feeling confined, he scratches at his nightgown as if it were sticking to him. He starts to take it off and Nora, the nurse, gets up and straightens it for him.

"There, there, Mr. Tomlinson. Be careful or you gonna scratch yourself to ribbons." She smiles sympathetically to him before turning to the woman standing at the edge of the bed, "It's their way of letting go.." She sighs, "Probably today."

Anna is well aware of it, but the words, her admonition of death being so close at hand, makes everything even more present. More heavier. Makes her chest tightens.

"Do you want more medication? The doctor said you can have all you want."

Louis is quiet, looking into the distance. Anna, seeking closure, sits on the bed with him and starts to cry.

Louis puts his thin arms around his daughter, comforting her. "Sssh, don't cry, love."

"A friend of mine told me she never got the chance to say goodbye to her mother." She tells, sniffing between the words, "I want to thank you, Dad. For being you. For bringing me to this world. For raising me so well."

"I really did a good job, uh?" His smile is weak but also proud.

"I'm gonna miss you so much." She sobs.

Louis takes a deep breath and pulls his daughter into his arms, hugging her close. They hold each other for a long time before they separate and Anna pops the big question.

"Are you afraid?"

Louis stops for a moment. "Just curious, I guess... About what comes next." He winces at a physical pain.

"The pain's coming more steadily. His breathing will falter soon." Nora says, raising the morphine level, "No need for him to suffer."

Louis closes his eyes, drifting with the morphine, and a thought, a dream, a sound, crosses his mind.

"They built that train station in 1918. Your father was there the day it opened. He said a tuba band was playing... _Oom-pah-pah, om-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah_... The finest clockmaker in all of the South built the clock.

His name was Mr. Gateau. Mr. Cake." He giggles, coughing a little.

The slightest of smiles crosses Louis' lips while he says to himself again. "Mr Cake."

"He was married to a Creole of Evangeline Parish and they had a son and he was from birth, absolutely blind. And when their son came of age, like boys will do, he joined the army. They saw him off at the old train station."

He breaths for a moment before continuing.

"Oh how he worked, for months he did nothing but work on the clock for the great train station. One day a letter came... It said that he son was killed in a battle. They buried him where the Gateau family had been buried for a hundred and seven years. Mr. Cake went back to work on his clock, laboring to finish.” 

"It was a morning to remember... Papa said there were people everywhere. Even Ted Roosevelt had come. It was a magnificent clock and everyone was marvelled but the surprisingly part was that the clock traveled backwards." 

" _I made it this way, so that perhaps, the boys who were lost in the war might stand and go home again. Home to farm, to work, have children, to live long, full lives. Perhaps, my own son might come home again. I'm sorry if I offended anybody. I hope you enjoy my clock_." It was what Monsieur Gateau said in his speech.

"Mr Cake was never seen again. Some say he died of a broken heart. Some say he went to sea. He just rowed... Rowed... Away..."

The wind loudly rattles the window...They  turn to look.

It's quiet, for a moment. Anna sitting on the bed with her dying father, with the wind knocking at the window.

"I hope I haven't disappointed you, Dad."

"Sweetheart, you could never disappointed me. Please don't worry you pretty head with these bullshits."

"I know you would've liked to have had grandchildren." 

"My life hasn't been all that... Normal. What's normal? A hat full of sand."

"What?" Anna stares at his father with a confused look in her face.

"I need my brown suitcase... The envelope." 

"An envelope?"

Anna does what she's asked for and  goes over to one of the suitcases by the bed. She opens it and among the clothes and the keepsakes, there is indeed an old envelope.

"This one?" 

"I tried to read it a hundred different times but I couldn't bring myself to." He sighs.

"I don't understand..."

"I want you to read to me."

Louis closes his eyes and Anna takes out a sheath of papers. It's a journal of some kind written in longhand. Pages have come undone, scraps of paper and even some napkins.

"Just the sound of your voice." The man murmurs.

And for her father's sake she begins to read it  with no particular interest, like reading to someone a selection from a menu's choices.

"It's dated 'April 4, 1985.' It says, 'Manchester'. _This is my last will and testament. I don't have much to leave, few possessions, no money really. I will go out of this world the same way I came in: alone and with nothing. All I have is my story... I'm writing it now while I still remember it..."_

She's interested now. She looks over at her father. But his eyes are closed.

_"My name is Harry..."_

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @kissyxqueen  
> curious cat: @babelouishoney


End file.
